-my sunshiny north-facing window, 1030pm.
-the lair.
-a color-saturated redux of the first artsy jello shot. I actually haven't tried them yet; they were still slightly goopy last night and i had to, like, go to work today. they're nearly flammable; they'll keep.
okay, here's a story:
when my parents and I first moved to AK in 1983, we lived in a grotty apartment building on 14th & Orca in beautiful Fairview. our deck looked out over what was then the municipal dump. seagulls and garbage trucks and cub planes from Merrill Field, fuck yeah! it was almost serene.
my dad got a job at Alaska Builders Cache, which was then located at 9th & Orca. (it later moved to Fireweed and went out of business, and the building got painted purple and was turned into a bingo hall.) he worked there for several years. and once we moved out of Fairview, and I was one of those socially awkward kids who went to "special school" "outside of my district," I had the pleasure of being dropped off by the school bus at 901 Orca after school every day from the age of 4 until I was 7 or 8 and begged to be left alone at home.
a cabinet and carpet store, especially an old and creepy and cavernous one with absolutely no supervision, is kind of an awesome place to kill hours of one's life. I'd crawl on the bolts of fiberglassy floor insulation and design my fantasy hovel with wallpaper sample books. I'd collect wood chips and carpet scraps and hide the gross uneaten parts of my lunch in the storage rooms.
and I'd play outside. there used to be this weird shack with lots of cats next door, and the rest of the block was a vacant lot. I'd wander in the weeds with the broken glass and nearby dump and feel very alone and weird. I'd talk to myself. I'd write stories out loud. and I'd obsessively pull the dried hulls off the tops of the dandelions that grew everywhere.
so last night I rode over to Orca Street.
-dandelions still grow through the pavement.
-the building appears vacant.
it's eerie to see your life objectively, as an adult. I feel strangely protective of that introverted, lonely little nerd that was me.
-sunset from my doorstep, 11pm.
-Octavia admiring Sleeping Beauty.
-and sometimes nothing really changes.
